The Short List for U.S. Chief Technology Officer — Barack Obama has pledged to name a cabinet-level CTO to oversee a job-creating national broadband buildout if he's elected. Big names abound — Barack Obama says that the U.S. is not doing nearly enough to create jobs through technology.

Google CEO Wants to Be President Obama's Tech Chief — Did you know? Besides sitting on Apple's board of directors, Google CEO Eric Schmidt has been an informal adviser to Barack Obama's presidential campaign. In fact, he lurves Obama so much that's he not just going to endorse him …

Scott Rafer: The Facebook Platform is Dead — When speaking at the Facebook developer conference today in Berlin, Scott Rafer declared that Facebook platform dead. He posted statistics including one that I posted that suggests Facebook widgets are dead. Lookery's own statistics …

Lala Plays a New Song. — Tomorrow, Lala Media Inc. will announce an interesting new approach to selling digital music. It's based on a new type of license it secured with the four major labels and 170,000 indie labels, that lets consumers pay a dime to own a song that they can listen …

Lala's Spectacular New Music Service — For a couple of months now, I've been using a music service that's been in a quiet (but open) beta period. It's been kind of amazing. That service is the all-new version of Lala, and it's officially throwing its doors open to the public today.

Dell and N-Trig: I've Had It — In many ways, the Dell Latitude XT Tablet PC has become one of my favorite Tablet PCs. It is very thin, light, has ample room on the wrist pad for typing, has a scroll wheel, and is generally pleasant to use in portrait mode. It goes to sleep and resumes very quickly.

TV Networks Must Stop Blocking Election Videos on YouTube — San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and a coalition of public interest groups called on four television networks today to stop stifling vibrant political debate on the Internet with overreaching copyright claims …

Researchers log keystrokes from afar with an antenna — Computer keystrokes can be snooped from afar by detecting the slight electromagnetic radiation emitted when a key is pressed, according to new research previewed on Monday. — Other security experts have theorized keyboards were vulnerable …

Please Fix The iPhone: A To-Do List For Steve Jobs — iPhone addicts love their iPhones, but nothing is perfect. Customer feedback for Apple just went public on Please Fix the iPhone. The site let's iPhone owners, or anyone else, list and vote on the features that most need fixing on the iPhone.

Wikia lays off 30 percent of staff — Bid goodnight to Jimmy Wales's dream of cashing out on Wikipedia, the world's largest collection of infrequently asked questions. The vehicle for his scheme, a derivative for-profit startup called Wikia, is imploding.

The cost of First Click Free — The web you see when you go through Google's search engine is no longer the web you see when you don't go through Google's search engine. — In a note on my previous post, The Centripetal Web, Seth Finkelstein points to Philipp Lenssen's discussion of a new Google service …

Popularity or Income? Two Sites Fight It Out — SAN FRANCISCO — In the aftermath of the dot-com bust, many chastened venture capitalists pledged never again to finance an idea scribbled on a cocktail napkin with no viable business model. Too many poorly conceived companies like Pets.com and Webvan had flamed out.

AT&T Samsung Epix i907 unboxing — Well, this has been a long time comin', hasn't it? We just got our grubby mitts on that much-debated Samsung Epix i907 and boy... it's thick! Counting out the AT&T Tilt, this is probably the thickest phone in their line-up.

Q4 earnings: A guide to Apple's guidance — Apple guides conservatively - which is to say it low-balls its earnings and revenue numbers for the coming quarter so that it can blow them out of the water three months later. It's a game the company plays every quarter, but the market never seems to learn …

Call it a ‘sub-subnotebook.’ New ‘PC’ is small as a cell phone! — SANTA BARBARA, CALIF. — IMOVIO launched today a smaller alternative to a subnotebook — much smaller. The new iKIT is about the size of a PDA from ten years ago, but has a QWERTY keyboard and connects to the Internet at 3G speeds via your cell phone or Wi-Fi.

RIM Could Rot With the Economy — Research In Motion, maker of the indispensable BlackBerry devices, may see sales stall in this brave, new, sucky economy. — That's the conclusion of Tavis McCourt, an analyst with Morgan Keegan. He expects sales growth will slip from 40 percent in 2008 to between 25 and 30 percent in 2009.

Inside an affiliate spam program for pharmaceuticals — Bargaining with your health doesn't just mean you're heading for a shorter life expectancy, but also, increases the chances that you will either get scammed in the process, or have to pay more in the long-term while dealing …